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F1

Porfirio Rubirosa

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Re: F1: Pushing the right Button

Jensen reportedly kept journalists waiting for 10 mins after his victory in Melbournes so that he could enjoy a private celebration with his GF Jessica Michibata. The Sun reported that Button, led Michibata away to a private room for a special post race debriefing, Button down, button up. And 10 mins later we can only imagine one big and tall Button emerging with the silliest smile across his face:biggrin::p
 

jw5

Moderator
Moderator
Loyal
I think Nigel Mansell was under-rated as well. But my all time favourite has still gotta be Senna, pure class and guts. RIP Ayrton.
Yes Mansell, haha. Not exactly the most liked among his peers, they probably couldn't take his sardonic humour.
But certainly another great race driver if not a great speedster.
The greatest speedster of all has to be the late Senna. Apparently his grave has become a top tourist attraction.
 

Baimi

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Re: F1: Pushing the right Button

2009 FORMULA 1 PETRONAS MALAYSIAN GRAND PRIXPos No Driver Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Laps
Pos.
1 22 Jenson Button Brawn-Mercedes 1:35.058 1:33.784 1:35.181 18
2 9 Jarno Trulli Toyota 1:34.745 1:33.990 1:35.273 20
3 15 Sebastian Vettel RBR-Renault 1:34.935 1:34.276 1:35.518 17
4 23 Rubens Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes 1:34.681 1:34.387 1:35.651 20
5 10 Timo Glock Toyota 1:34.907 1:34.258 1:35.690 24
6 16 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 1:35.083 1:34.547 1:35.750 21
7 14 Mark Webber RBR-Renault 1:35.027 1:34.222 1:35.797 19
8 5 Robert Kubica BMW Sauber 1:35.166 1:34.562 1:36.106 19
9 4 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 1:35.476 1:34.456 1:36.170 17
10 7 Fernando Alonso Renault 1:35.260 1:34.706 1:37.659 15
11 6 Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 1:35.110 1:34.769 14
12 17 Kazuki Nakajima Williams-Toyota 1:35.341 1:34.788 13
13 1 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1:35.280 1:34.905 13
14 2 Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 1:35.023 1:34.924 14
15 11 Sebastien Bourdais STR-Ferrari 1:35.507 1:35.431 16
16 3 Felipe Massa Ferrari 1:35.642 4
17 8 Nelsinho Piquet Renault 1:35.708 11
18 21 Giancarlo Fisichella Force India-Mercedes 1:35.908 8
19 20 Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 1:35.951 10
20 12 Sebastien Buemi STR-Ferrari
 

Baimi

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Lewis got ZERO points. Lol. Still feel this guy is over rated and arrogant.

Why Hamilton has to stoop so low, with his talent
starting for 18 on the grid and finishing 4th, how many
drivers can do that? And with today technologies, he think
he can get away with it??
I used to support him, now i will have 2nd thought!!
This year i think i will go for:
1)Jenson Button Brawn-Mercedes
2)Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari
3)Jarno Trulli Toyota
 

Porfirio Rubirosa

Alfrescian
Loyal
Lost all respect for Hamilton, looks like he is even worse than Shumacher, wants to win at all costs, even to the point of being a liar. Even when he lies he claims he was "mislead" into lying, I mean wtf:rolleyes: Great driver no doubt but no integrity to become a great sportsman.

Btw looks like Sepang was scrtached this afternoon because of heavy rain. Button was leading in the 32nd Lap when it is was stopped. Looks like the Michibata effect is working, man she sure looks hot, saw her on the telly in the pits in sepang in a short dress showing off her lingerie model bod:p
 

Baimi

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Btw looks like Sepang was scrtached this afternoon because of heavy rain. Button was leading in the 32nd Lap when it is was stopped. Looks like the Michibata effect is working, man she sure looks hot, saw her on the telly in the pits in sepang in a short dress showing off her lingerie model bod:p

Saw her too, and there was a lady beside her also.



€t was always likely that the rain would affect Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix, but nobody expected the precipitation to play such a key role in a race that was full of excitement. The management of pit stops proved crucial as conditions changed as Brawn GP's Jenson Button won amid much confusion as the race was red flagged after 32 laps.

Button was leading when the expected rain finally arrived on the 22nd lap, despite making a second pit call (the first had been on the 19th lap) to switch from his second set of soft compound Bridgestones to wets. He resumed still in the lead and continued that way until it became clear just how fast Toyota's Timo Glock was going on intermediates after his stop on Lap 22. Button swept back in on Lap 29 for inters, and grabbed the lead back from Glock as the Toyota dived in at the end of Lap 30 for wets.

The conditions had changed again, so in came Button for a third time on lap 31 to go back to the deeply grooved rubber. He resumed in the lead again as Glock battled with BMW Sauber's Nick Heidfeld for second place, and that was when race director Charlie Whiting decided that it was time for the safety car. A lap later, out went the red flag. Confusion reigned.

Up to that point, the Malaysian Grand Prix had been a gripper.

Button made a poor start and was engulfed by Williams' Nico Rosberg, who made a super getaway. Button tried to run round the outside of him in Turn One and lost out also to Toyota's Jarno Trulli, and Renault's Fernando Alonso got in on the act briefly too before Button snatched back third before the lap was over.

Further back, Rubens Barrichello had sprinted up to fifth in the second Brawn car ahead of Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, Red Bull's Mark Webber, Glock, Heidfeld and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.

€n the second McLaren Heikki Kovalainen went off the road in Turn Five, while Robert Kubica's BMW Sauber was all but left on the grid and expired on the second lap.

Rosberg pulled away a little from Trulli, who had his hands full with Button, but after the German stopped on the 15th lap and the €talian on the 17th, Button got the hammer down and was able to concede the lead just to team mate Barrichello before taking it back when Rubens stopped on lap 23.

The biggest gamble of the day came from Ferrari. When Raikkonen pitted on the 18th lap they put him on wets early, and it proved a disastrous decision as he lapped 21s slower than Button. Further back, team mate Felipe Massa struggled with Hamilton as the world champion lost out in fights with the Red Bulls of Webber and Sebastian Vettel, who had been the first to pit, on lap 13.

Just before the rain, the order was Button, six seconds ahead of Rosberg, Trulli and Barrichello. Alonso was fifth from Hamilton (both yet to stop), then came Heidfeld and Massa, Piquet and Nakajima, Webber, Glock and Trulli who had all stopped, Raikkonen, and then the Toro Rossos and Force €ndias.

Then came the wholesale stops on the 22nd lap as the rain came, followed by thunder and lightning and all the drama that had been predicted.

By lap 25 things had stabilised a little as the drivers splashed their way around, and parts of the track became less wet than others. Button was still leading, from Rosberg, Trulli and Barrichello, but Webber was now fifth from Heidfeld after Alonso had briefly fallen off, then came Hamilton, Glock, Massa, Piquet, Nakajima, Vettel (also, like Glock, flying on inters), Alonso, Raikkonen et al. But conditions were still so tricky that many decided to change to inters, only to find, as Button did, that wets were the answer after all.

When the red flag came out on lap 32, the order read: Button, Glock, Heidfeld (a long way behind after a spin), Trulli, Barrichello, Hamilton, Rosberg, Webber, Massa, Bourdais, Alonso, Nakajima, Piquet, Raikkonen, Sutil, Vettel, Buemi and Fisichella (who had spun twice).

That was when the guessing began. Would they restart the race, as the rain eased but the sky became darker with the onset of evening? €f not, when would they backdate the result, because of all the pit stops?

At 18.52 the race directors finally called it off. Button had won, it was just a matter of deciding how far they would go back to decide the order behind him. €n the end, that was lap 31, giving a race finishing order of:

Button, Heidfeld, Glock; Trulli, Barrichello, Webber, Hamilton and Rosberg as the points scorers. Then: Massa, Bourdais, Alonso, Nakajima, Piquet, Raikkonen, Vettel, Buemi, Sutil and Fisichella.

Since the race had gone past the 50 percent mark but not 75 percent, half points were awarded. But for Button, it was the chance to extend his championship lead from 10 points to 15, with Barrichello next on 10 from Trulli on 8.5. €n the constructors' championship, Brawn have 25 to Toyota's 16.5.
 

Porfirio Rubirosa

Alfrescian
Loyal
Wonder whether Button got the same 'Michibata treatment' that he got in Melbourne after the win?:biggrin:

On a more serious note, what the hell is going on with the cavallino rampante:eek: Massa and Kimi must be damn pissed this morning.
 

Leongsam

High Order Twit / Low SES subject
Admin
Asset
http://chiefofficers.net/888333888/...s_organisers_to_blame_for_malaysian_gp_fiasco

F1: Sports organisers to blame for Malaysian GP fiasco

Bryan Edwards
Monday 06 April 2009

The blame for the abandoning of the Malaysian GP must lie squarely at the feet of Formula One's organisers. They must not be allowed to express or imply that the event organisers or the circuit owners are at all responsible for the fiasco of the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix.

It's Malaysia. It's equatorial. It rains. Hard. And, to a degree, it's predictable when it will rain. Malaysia's Sepang circuit was designed and built with rain in mind. And it copes very well. Until a monsoon arrives.

A monsoon is a special sort of storm. Those who think it rains in Manchester have no idea how much water can fall onto a small area in a short time. In the monsoon belt, they are used to it. And they build towns and cities to cope – but still they flood. In Central Kuala Lumpur, just 40 kilometres from Sepang, some of the world's most sophisticated flood drain systems are occasionally overloaded. And during a downpour, main roads flood within ten minutes – not occasionally but daily. Pavements are built over storm drains with inlets far larger than anyone sees even a few hundred kilometres north, and yet still they cannot handled the vast amount of water that a monsoon storm brings. The efficiency of the system is shown when, within ten to fifteen minutes of the storm ending, the roads are free of standing water.

It is against this background that the Sepang circuit's drainage was designed. There is, quite simply, no defence against a full-blown monsoon hitting the track.

The fans knew it, the organisers knew it but the FIA and FOM decided to risk the success of the event on a grander plan: to run races in the East, but to do it at a time that suits European audiences.

Lest we forget – it is only within the past few years that Bernie Ecclestone has said that the most important markets for F1 are China and other developing motorsport nations such as the middle east, Russia and India. What he means is that that's where the revenue will come from. But it's not worked out like that, and it's not where the audiences are. And continued failure of the USA to accept Formula One as the pinnacle of motorsport has refocussed the sport on its heartland in Europe.

So European TV audiences are the driving force behind the decisions to bring night-time and late afternoon racing into F1.

Last week in Melbourne, low sun created unnecessary danger for the drivers after the installation of lights in Albert Park was rejected by Melbourne's city representatives as too expensive. And in Sepang, where in at each of the past two years it has poured down around 5pm, the circuit owners said that night racing is just too expensive to put on – and that as a regional racem spectator numbers would be reduced because spectators would not be able to get home in time for work on Monday morning.

And so, in what was marketed as a compromise the race was scheduled for 5pm.But even that is late for when sundown comes this close to the equator, light turns to dark almost as quickly as a light bulb goes out. And depending on the weather, that can be anywhere from 6:30 to 7:15.

A Formula One race has a maximum duration of two hours. So a race run in wet conditions may get close to that two hour deadline. If it rains normally, that is. In a monsoon, forget it. Take it from us: if you dry to drive a road car in a monsoon, you are close to insane. Driving an open racing car? You'd be certifiable.

There were only two hopes: first that the monsoon would come early – say around 4:15 and then – with a delayed start – it would complete - just - before it went dark. But only if the race was run at dry, or almost dry, speeds. Any delay would put the end of the two hour session deep into potential dark-time.

The second hope was that Sepang's microclimate would mean that the downpour would pass by as it sometimes does, just a few hundred metres away.

That was a gamble that was unlikely to pay off. The first storm arrived later than expected and did indeed drift by close enough for light spotting on visors on one corner.

Then the rain proper came. It came without warning. The rain warning had been given for the first storm 10 minutes into the race but that storm missed. We did not see any other rain warning but, with 23 of 58 laps still to go, and so little time that not even a complete lap was done, Sepang was under water. An attempt by the safety car to pick up the cars and drive them around was abandoned before a complete lap was done behind it, and the cars were left to make their own way back to the grid under red flags.

When the rain stopped, there was around 15 minutes to go before the two hour maximum running time for a GP expired. But that was not enough time for the drainage system clear off the standing water and to allow the run-off from the hillsides to slow.

A restart requires ten minutes warning to the teams. And so, any restart warning must be given no more than one hour fifty minutes after the lights went out for the start of the race.

With 12 minutes to go to the deadline, drivers were sitting in their cars, expecting to start off behind the safety car for one lap, just to show willing to the spectators who had remained. But by that point, it was clear: they would not be led around the track until the safety car had at least done a reconnaissance lap – and that was not going to be at a speed anywhere near the 1:35 that dry conditions had been producing.

So, a combination of rules meant that, after 1 hour 50 minutes, almost half of which had been spent stationary on the grid in pouring rain, the stewards declared a result.

Cheated? You bet we were. A thrilling race had been curtailed by an avoidable risk.

And no matter what anyone tells you, the start time of 5pm decided upon by the FIA and FOM was the proximate cause of the fiasco.
 

Bike_Tyson

Alfrescian
Loyal
F1 Malaysian GP 2009 @ Sepang

IMG_0429.jpg

Ferrari getting ready Flipper's car

IMG_0430.jpg

Nick looked bored, unaware of a podium finish ahead

IMG_0452.jpg

This car's only good for 1/2 a lap

IMG_0332.jpg

Boy Friday
 

Bike_Tyson

Alfrescian
Loyal
Ron Dennis to leave McLaren

http://www.formula1.com/news/features/2009/4/9182.html

Ron Dennis - the conclusion of an illustrious F1 career
McLaren’s announcement on Thursday that Ron Dennis is to bow out of Formula One racing in favour of a role championing the company’s new sports car business, brings to a close one of the most influential careers in the sport’s history. From mechanic to team principal, Dennis has been a pioneering force for the over 30 years.

He started his motorsport career back in 1966, joining the Cooper Racing Car Company after a spell as an apprentice mechanic. Within two years he moved to Brabham where he became the chief mechanic to three-time champion Jack Brabham. By 1971, however, an ambitious Dennis had left to set up his own Formula Two team, Rondel Racing.

Rondel would be the first of several successful F2 and Procar ventures Dennis was involved with over the next decade. His big break, however, came in 1980 when his team, Project Four, merged with McLaren to form McLaren Racing. Within two years he’d assumed control of the team and with him at the helm the team didn’t look back.

McLaren have since won 162 races, seven constructors’ championships and 10 driver titles, with Niki Lauda, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna just some of the famous names to have won championships whilst driving for the Woking team. Their most recent champion, Lewis Hamilton, was hand-picked by Dennis when he was just 13 years-old as a future talent.

Dennis’s entrepreneurial skills have also led McLaren to diversify into several other areas and in 1989 he co-founded McLaren Cars, which designed and manufactured the revolutionary F1 road car of 1994. As well as its automotive interests, the McLaren Group currently encompasses McLaren Electronic Systems, McLaren Applied Technologies, McLaren Marketing and Absolute Taste.

In 2000, Dennis was honoured with a CBE for services to motorsport and a year later was presented with a BRDC Gold Medal in recognition of his contribution to motorsport. Over the years he has also been awarded an Hon DTech from De Montfort University in 1996, an Hon DSc from City University (London) in 1997 and, in 2000, an Hon DSc from the University of Surrey.

He retains a stake in McLaren, alongside fellow shareholders Daimler, the Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company and the TAG Group. But, with his attentions now fully focused on McLaren Automotive (which will become an independent company later this year), his careful stewardship of the Formula One team passes in full to long-time colleague Martin Whitmarsh, who became team principal at the start of March.
 

Lion_Barbell

Alfrescian
Loyal
Who will win tomorrow's Shanghai race?

Rosberg has got the fastest lap times in both the Melbourne & Malaysian races, why couldn't he finish on the podium?
 

Baimi

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
2009 FORMULA 1 CHINESE GRAND PRIXPos No Driver Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Laps
1 15 Sebastian Vettel RBR-Renault 1:36.565 1:35.130 1:36.184 11
2 7 Fernando Alonso Renault 1:36.443 1:35.803 1:36.381 21
3 14 Mark Webber RBR-Renault 1:35.751 1:35.173 1:36.466 19
4 23 Rubens Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes 1:35.701 1:35.503 1:36.493 21
5 22 Jenson Button Brawn-Mercedes 1:35.533 1:35.556 1:36.532 19
6 9 Jarno Trulli Toyota 1:36.308 1:35.645 1:36.835 21
7 16 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 1:35.941 1:35.809 1:37.397 23
8 4 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 1:36.137 1:35.856 1:38.089 19
9 1 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1:35.776 1:35.740 1:38.595 17
10 12 Sebastien Buemi STR-Ferrari 1:36.284 1:35.965 1:39.321 21
11 6 Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 1:36.525 1:35.975 14
12 2 Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 1:36.646 1:36.032 10
13 3 Felipe Massa Ferrari 1:36.178 1:36.033 11
14 10 Timo Glock Toyota 1:36.364 1:36.066 14
15 17 Kazuki Nakajima Williams-Toyota 1:36.673 1:36.193 13
16 11 Sebastien Bourdais STR-Ferrari 1:36.906 10
17 8 Nelsinho Piquet Renault 1:36.908 10
18 5 Robert Kubica BMW Sauber 1:36.966 8
19 20 Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 1:37.669 10
20 21 Giancarlo Fisichella Force India-Mercedes 1:37.672
 

allanlee

Alfrescian
Loyal
huh?? What happened to the Toyota boys? I think it's the 1st time they will occupy the first row of the grid.

Bahrain is the "home" ground of the Toyotas :p ...... they did their pre-season and testing on this track.......... that's why Trulli & Glock are very confident of a podium finish in this race :biggrin:
 
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